


Love, did you remember me,  Love of long ago?

by Nina36



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M, I'm a major in English Literature ...I hate that I cannot ignore history, Reincarnation, angst (I'm such an angst whore), angst with a happy ending of sort...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 14:52:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8331952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina36/pseuds/Nina36
Summary: Many lives, one love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the poem "One Thousand Years Ago" by Charles G. Leland

The first time they meet – the first of many, their lives only briefly brush each other’s. They see each other in a crowded market: a slave and the wife of a powerful man; they both shiver when their eyes meet for the briefest moment.

A heartbeat, two and then each goes back to their lives.

Their souls are new, untarnished, incomplete.

Being soulmates does not guarantee happiness. It does not guarantee that paths will cross and intertwine. Therefore they live their lives – and if there is a sense of emptiness hovering over both of them they are not in the position to do anything about it.

When he dies – and they will watch each other die a lot of times through the ages – they are not together and yet she wakes up in the middle of the night, clutching at her heart, her breath caught in her throat, visions of dark brown eyes and something warm and familiar she has felt, for the briefest moment, so long ago.

She dies shortly after.

 

* * *

 

With each life they live their paths overlap more. For brief minutes, for hours, for short life spans. She is his mother in one of their earliest lives, she has to bury her beloved son due to tetanus, she recognizes his son’s eyes, his soul, she thinks it is not the end, it cannot be the end.

She is right.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s the end of August when the Earth shakes, they have just met, an instant connection between them, one neither of them can possibly rationalize or explain. In a matter of minutes, it does not matter who they are, what their roles and positions are. The Earth is shaking, lapilli, lava, and the sea are swallowing everything and everyone up.

“Take my hand.” He says. He is the most beautiful man she has ever seen. She does not know him, she doesn’t even know his name, but the world is ending, the sky is red and gray, she cannot breath, she is scared – so he follows him.

It’s not the first life they live, it’s not the first time they meet, but it’s the first time, the first of many, where they fall in love with each other. They have already loved each other, their souls are made for each other, but that time is different. They both feel it as they run for their lives. Their lips meet for the first time, and they feel complete, they are not afraid. They love each other, their lovemaking is frantic, both their hearts bursting with love, with the knowledge that their time together is coming to an end.

Twenty-five hours. He tries to save her. He fails. He is the last thing she sees as the sea swallows her up. She has a brass ring on her finger, his ring. She cannot see him, she hopes he survives, she knows the will meet again, as she dies that’s her last thought.

They will meet again.

She will recognize his eyes, the way he loved her, protected her, shielded her from the fire and the ash and the horror.

He dies seconds after her, neither would have been surprised had they known how similar his thoughts were to hers.

They are to meet again.

Their souls have touched each other, now. They will seek each other out. That is not the end.

 

* * *

 

 

Fate is capricious.  Fate  has let them taste completeness once, but  only allows morsels of that same feeling later. Their souls are not as new, as untarnished as they used to be. They seek each other, now,  unconsciously yearning for the missing piece of their hearts and souls.

They do not know how many times they have met, they do not know or remember each other, all they know when they see each other, in front of a bonfire, after other lifetimes spent at the periphery of each other’s existences is that they are both _home._

She is married. Her husband is  his friend and protector, he saved his life once.

He is bound to her husband by duty, honor, and oaths. He is loyal to the core, he is powerless as he falls in love for the young woman his Lord has married not out of love but convenience.  

He was her first and only man, she wasn’t in love with him, but it hardly mattered. She appreciates her luck that he is a good, honorable man, that he respects her, her sisters have not been as lucky with their husbands.

She is not unlucky as her sister in law, who still lives in the castle. She is naive, she was barely more than a child when she married, she is unaware of how cruel people can be, how selfish.

She falls in love for the first time in that lifetime, she falls in love with him, again, like she has done in other lives, she knows his soul, she recognizes it and she knows, even if he does not, would never act on his feelings that he loves her as well.

He never touches her – for he knows that it would be his undoing. He loves his Lord, he is bound to him by a bond borne out of shared battles and blood and honor and he knows that it would not be enough if he ever touched his beautiful wife.

She doesn’t touch him because he is like fire: bright and beautiful and dangerous. She doesn’t touch him because she knows she would do something foolish, something forbidden if she ever did.

They dance, once, trying desperately to hide what they feel, but they as well might have tried to hide the sun or the stars for people see them, people watch them dance, too close, gazes locked, love and desire burning in their eyes, dancing on their skins and whisper.

Whispers do not touch them; they are _innocent._ They may feel too much about each other, they both might feel as if they have known each other for all their lives even if it is but a few weeks, but they do not, would not act on those feelings.

Her brother (her mother in a previous life, her brother in another, the husband who had held her as she buried her beloved son, a future son who will die young) had the gift. He saw how brightly their souls shine while they are together, he sees, feels how far they have to go before they can truly be one, be together.

He rides with him on a rainy morning and tells him, he speaks as a brother, as a friend, as someone who can peek beyond the veil.

“It is not your time, yet.” He says, “your path is not complete, yet.”

Dark gray eyes look at him with confusion, with pain.

“You shall be together, but you need to leave her now.” He says.

He can’t leave her, he tries, he knows he has to – but he can’t bring himself to leave her. He loves her children, he looks mesmerized as she plays with them in the park.

He is watched, observed by a greedy woman, one who has plans, one who whispers and whose words are like venom’s poison.

She does not understand until it is too late, until they are alone, in a room, during a masked ball, and he tells her he is going to leave in the morning.

It hurts. She cannot breathe for a moment. The words spill out of her mouth, they taste salty like blood and tears on her lips when she says, “I cannot live with you.”

The barriers, the principles, loyalty and duty fall apart as she speaks. They have not known each other for a long time – they have known each other for centuries, loved each other, lost each other and it crystallizes in an embrace.

He doesn’t remember the Earth shaking, the sky red and gray, she doesn’t remember deep brown eyes in a crowded market or the son who died in her arms.

Neither does remember the quiet lives, uneventful, brightened by chance meetings, looks exchanged at Mass.

Yet they know.

The kiss lasts a moment, a lifetime, twenty-five hours and lifetimes spent apart, for fate is capricious, the threads of their lives are yet not meant to be completely interwoven.

The ripple effect caused by a single kiss is devastating: she is truthful when says that she has never laid with him, but she cannot lie – she cannot say that she did not want that kiss, that she has not fallen in love with him.

He is truthful when he says that he would have never taken advantage of her, that his loyalty to his lord would have stopped him, that he respected her virtue. He cannot lie, he cannot even try and explain how deeply he loves the woman.

Neither gets the chance to.

It ends in blood, in tears. They do not get to see each other again, he knows when she dies, his heart cries out her name. He remembers what her brother told him on a rainy day.

It is not their time. Not _yet._

 

* * *

 

They taste happiness, once. Complete happiness. They meet in 1524, it’s summer and Rome is breathtakingly beautiful. They are not rich, they are free. He doesn’t care about her dowry, about traditions, about rules.

They are happy. The ring he gives her it’s her most treasured possession. They watch the stars together, they walk hand in hand, they spend nights in each other’s arms and they both feel complete.

She dreams of rain, sometimes, she hears a voice telling her it’s not time, yet.

His name is Vittorio, her name is Caterina.

He dreams of bonfires, sometimes, his eyes fill with tears when he smells burnt leaves.

She is afraid of the water. He dreams of lava and ash.

He is older than her – but they don’t feel the difference in age.

She tells him once that she feels she has always known him. He kisses her forehead. He dotes on her, she worships him. Their life is perfect, a gift from fate, even if their dreams scare them, even if they start to feel like all that happiness cannot possibly last.

They have a daughter: it’s their joy and their hope.

It’s a terrible time, they are so wrapped up in their lives, in the everyday occurrences that they don’t have the time to do anything else when the Lansquenets come.

 Fire, again.

Water, again.

He drowns in the Tiber, that time she is the one who watches him being swallowed up by the water.

It is not the end.

 

* * *

 

Round and round they go – never as close as that one time, never allowed to feel complete, to taste the happiness they had both felt, always at the periphery of each other’s lives. They live, they love, they look for something they do not know they desperately yearn.

William Lamb, future second viscount of Melbourne, is a fatalist. He feels he has lived a hundred lives, he grows up in an unconventional environment, his mother is a very strong woman (she has been his daughter in a previous life, and a desperate father who spent his last hours looking for his daughter as the Vesuvius erupted.), he has an unconventionally strong bond with his siblings, they close rank when one of them suffers, his sisters feel the need to protect William.

William loves. He falls in love with his wife, he will blame himself, later for her indiscretions. Perhaps if he had been a better husband, one whose dreams made sense, one who didn’t feel it was useless to fight against fate, she would not have fallen for the despicable Lord Byron.

He had forgiven her in the hope he could forgive himself. He had – not done enough to save her. He had felt – incomplete, that feeling only partially mitigated by the birth of his beloved boy. He dreamed: images, sounds, colors, not completely formed.

He is almost forty when Alexandrina Victoria, the future Queen of England, is born. He will forget the dreams he had that night, he dreams about Rome, about watching the Tiber at sunset from Ponte Sant Angelo, of a plain gold band on a woman’s finger, of legs entwined and her voice whispering, “I feel like I have always known you, I feel like I was born  to be with you.”

He will only meet the woman when she becomes the Queen.

He kisses her hand and he feels like he can breathe, for the first time since his son died.

She is the Queen, she is a girl, everyone has always treated her as a child, as someone who could not take care of herself. She does not feel like a child, she has never felt like one. She knows what her duty is – she is ready to be the Queen.

She is not prepared for Lord M. He fills her life, in a way that confuses her, amazes her, makes her happy. She does not remember her dreams; there are smells that make her breath catch in her throat. They spend hours, together, every day, and somehow it is never enough. He tells her about his family, he still mourns his younger brother, his voice cracks as he tells her about his son – and she somehow knows that pain, she feels his loss as if she was her own as if she had lost a brother, a daughter, a son.

They gossip and they play cards, she knows people talk – she knows they call her Mrs. Melbourne and it makes her heart flutter in her chest. She writes about him in her journal, but there are things that, as young and inexperienced as she is, she knows she cannot write in her journal because no one would understand.

They once stop in front of a bonfire, during one of their daily rides, they watch the flames for long minutes and whispers something in Latin, not a poem, just words.

“Ego autem non timere mortis. Et te usque in sempiternum”

 He does not reply. He feigns not to hear, but she knows he has. He always listens to her. She loves him. She falls in love with him – it feels like she has always loved him, in one way or another.

She daydreams, she imagines sharing her life with him at her side, not as her private secretary, not as her Prime Minister, but as a husband. She imagines bringing joy to his life as much as he has brought joy to hers.

She cannot imagine her life without him and his rejection tears her apart. She dreams of drowning with a ring on her finger, she dreams of a starless sky and bonfires. They dance together, for the last time (in that lifetime) he wraps his love and their truth in an analogy that  is worse than the first rejection.

He loves her – as much as she does, but it cannot change the life they have. It cannot change their roles, how their paths cannot merge into one.

He has told her that she has to keep her heart intact for someone else. He has told her she needs a husband who would honor, protect and cherish her.

He is almost right.

She loves Albert. She truly does. But her heart is not intact. She can’t honor his wish.

She never forgets. She knows when he dies, they haven’t seen each other for years, they have not even written to each other: too inconvenient and unbecoming. She has obeyed her husband, but she has never stopped dreaming.

In her dream, the night before he dies they dance together all night, his green eyes are as familiar to her as her own. In her dream, he kisses her hand under the stars and they watch bonfires together.

She cries, she mourns, she smiles in her sleep when she sees him.

“This is not the end, my beloved.” He tells her.

She believes him.

 

* * *

 

He does not believe in magic, psychics, and the lot. He is at a party, half drunk and mildly depressed - he has always been like that, even if his life is not bad, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

He scoffs when his girlfriend (they haven’t been together for a long time, a few weeks and he knows the relationship isn’t going anywhere) drags him to the table where a girl with too many rings on her fingers is reading palms and tarot cards.

“It will be fun, c’mon!” She giggles.

He obliges her, he likes the way she is holding his hand, he likes how she smells of strawberry and besides he doesn’t believe in those things.

The woman has a brass ring on her index finger, for some reason he can’t keep his eyes off of it when he sees it.

“Step back.” She says the other people when she takes his palm in her hands.

They are all drunk, too much cheap wine and tequila, but her voice carries a weight, people do step back and they are alone.

She brushes the lines of his hands with her fingertips, he sees the amethyst of one of her rings spark and his breath catches in his throat when the blue stone of one of her rings reminds him of something.

She whispers in his ear, she knows about the dreams he has always had, she knows about his obsession with Victorian England and his fear of water.

She whispers in his ear that he will be happy, that he will be complete in this lifetime.

She tells him not to lose himself in bitterness. She tells him a name, “Amy.”, she tells him about big brown eyes and about a silver ring.

He laughs, shakes his head – but can’t sleep that night.

He graduates, his first novel is a complete failure, he teaches and can’t keep a relationship to save his life. He forgets (not really) about what the woman with many rings told him. He has a draft of a novel on his computer and a black notebook where he doodles lines, fragments of dreams when he wakes up. He is neurotic and a fatalist, he loves his younger sister and never complains when she brings him with her to the theater or at concerts or just on shopping sprees.

She has stopped trying to play matchmaker with him, she laughs and says that she knows his soulmate is out there, somewhere.

“I don’t believe in soulmates.” He says.

“Watch the universe care …” She replies stealing one of his fries.

He writes the second book on a whim, it’s a love story: parts of himself he has always kept tightly locked up spill onto the pages. It’s a story about love, loss, and fire. It’s the more honest he has ever been.

His agent falls in love with the book, his new editor – good bloke, but a monumental pain in the arse – declares that parts of it need to go away. He volunteers to do it himself, his editor smiles (that smile is familiar, even if they  have just met) and says, “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Amelia Kent is young, she has worked as an editor for less than six months, she is talented, beautiful and writers tend to underestimate her. Her long hair is picked in a severe bun, she is dressed crisply, she doesn’t wear makeup because she is lazy and always forgets to put it out when she bothers to wear makeup, ending up looking like a panda in the morning. She drinks coffee and wears a thick silver ring on her middle finger, it’s a family heirloom and she wears it proudly.

She hasn’t read the novel, yet – and she knows from experience that she will have to fight, or so she thinks until she meets him: green eyes (so familiar, so beloved), dark hair and the most beautiful smile she has ever seen.

“I’m Amelia Kent…” She said, feeling breathless for a moment. She is not a blushing virgin, she is a grown woman and she blushes when he smiles.

He makes terrible coffee, but she drinks it anyway, she sees all the books in his flat, recognizes some of her favorite among his collection, he looks almost embarrassed when she starts to read the book with him in the same room.

She falls in love with him within the first hour of their acquaintance, he is not far behind. He never is.

She knows the story he is telling, she can see it, hear it, smell and taste it as if she had lived it. She doesn’t tell him the first day.

She brings coffee and croissants the day after, she wears jeans and a blue sweater, she blushes when he smiles, he blushes when she kisses his cheek in greeting.

Time stands still.

Fate, the illusion of choices, paths, fire and water, ash and stars, all the lives they have lived, all the pain, the loss and the love they have experienced crystallize in a single second.

Green meets dark brown, he brushes her cheek with his fingers, she doesn’t remember how many times they have met, how long they have waited for that moment. All she knows is the here and now, the fact that for the first time in her life she feels absolutely whole.

She sees that it is the same for him, she feels it, with every atom of her being.

 It is what they have both yearned, it is lifetimes spent apart, too brief encounters, a brass ring and a plain gold band, it is a bonfire in autumn and a coronation ball.

It is their moment and they both know that.

Their first kiss does not bring back memories of past lives, they don’t need them. They build new ones: of love, laughter, fire, and stars.

The second book is a best seller, but he doesn’t care.  

He is finally, finally home. They both are.

 

  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had to stop myself before I ended up with another mammoth in my hands. It's just images and a lot of feels - really a lot of feelings about Vicbourne, which has officially consumed my soul!


End file.
